Prof. Wole Soyinka ~ I Was Not Behind Achebe’s Accident

NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole
Soyinka has berated critics, who
attributed the cause of late Chinua
Achebe’s accident that eventually
confined him to a wheel chair until he
recently breathed his last, to the
“spotless ram” he presented to him as
a gift for his sixtieth birthday. Soyinka,
in a release entitled “The Village
Mourners Association,” lamented the
reaction of a category of people he
likened to “homicidal clerics,” whom
he said began to spread the
falsehood after Achebe’s burial.
According to Soyinka, it was wrong for
people to situate the ram he
graciously presented to a friend on his
birthday, which he (Achebe) warmly
received with a comment “Typical of
Wole,” as the cause of Chinua
Achebe’s motor accident. Soyinka tells
his own story in the release, saying:
Here goes the story, for those who
seek light relief from ponderous
unctuousness: “What happened was
that I found myself unable to return to
Nigeria for a Colloquium in honour of
Chinua’s sixtieth birthday.
My dramatic mind immediately
scrambled for some striking manner
of compensation. “So I telephoned a
business friend who had some
agricultural connections in Delta State
and told him: find the chunkiest,
spotless ram in Delta State – all white
or all black, but a thoroughbred of
striking physique. “Find a leather
pouch, tie it to its neck with the
following message and deliver it at the
venue of the Colloquium. I no longer
recall the exact dictated wording,
nothing inspirational, just the usual
felicitations and injunctions to turn
that ram into asun for general
feasting.
“Those who attended the event will
recall the grand entry of the gift – as
reported by one and all, including the
foreign visitors, and Chinua’s reported
reaction, seated on the podium.
He shook head and said, ‘Typical of
Wole.’ “The ram was then led off to
meet its destiny at the hands of the
gathered. (As a side note, it was I who
took a gift away from his seventieth at
Bard University – a sobering flash of
time past that resulted in my ELEGY
FOR A NATION.
I had that poem re-published to mark
the day of his funeral.) “Our story is
only beginning. On the way back from
that celebration, Chinua had his
accident and was flown to the United
Kingdom. At the first opportunity, I
made my way there and called up the
High Commissioner, Dove-Edwin, who
was certain to know the hospital
location.
“It turned out that he also planned a
visit that afternoon, and he agreed to
give me a ride. We waited – I was
joined by two others – waited, and
waited, then a phone call came from
him that the visit had been called off.
The High Commissioner would
explain why, on arrival – over a
promised dinner, as compensation.
“That explanation was this: Dove-
Edwin had received communication
that some of ‘Chinua’s people’ – a
university professor among them,
who was named – had pronounced
publicly that ‘Chinua should have
known better than to accept a
spotless ram from his enemy’ – yes,
that was the word used – ‘enemy.’
“I verified this report from various
other sources. Later, an alternative
diagnosis surfaced: ‘Chinua had been
too long away from the chieftaincy
politics of his hometown, otherwise
he would have realized that the title
that he took was coveted by some
others – and these were deeply
steeped in traditional psychic combat.’
“In short, those rivals ‘did him in.
’ Both diagnoses competed for
dominance for a while, petering out
eventually. “Before the promotion of
that alternative cause-and-effect
however, Dove-Edwin had re-
scheduled, and we had a most
bracing, optimistic afternoon with
Chinua. Yes, our patient was
eventually told the cause of the earlier
postponement, and he had a good
laugh.
“On my return to Nigeria, I could not
wait to take the opportunity of a
public lecture to invite all desperate
enemies to please send me their rams
of choice – spotless, spotted, piebald,
striped or nondescript – so I could
treat starving writers to free meals in
my home for the rest of the year. And
I promised to taste a piece of each
ram before serving.
” Soyinka said it was that same breed
that “continues to sow poison in the
minds of the susceptible.” He said
those people may want to position
themselves of “being there, even
when absent,” yet they
“ostentatiously” position themselves at
the event, or at vicarious gatherings to
denounce, attribute sinister
motivations, and inseminate hate
against those whom their “pedestrian
vision cannot see.” “Your very
loudness proclaims your absence,”
Soyinka said.
“You were always absent. You will
always be absent. So, this
communication is not really meant for
you but for those potential almajiri –
whose minds you corrupt daily with
your jeremiads in that
accommodating madrassa known as
Internet,” he said. Addressing his
critics, Soyinka said they should not
misinform their audience.
“Äs a teacher, I lament your failure to
use the opportunity of the passing of
a revered writer to turn your younger
generation in enlightened directions.
“You have chosen instead to coarsen
their sensibilities and breed in their
minds misunderstanding, suspicion
and above all – hate!”
“You will have understood by now
how I have come to view you as no
different from the homicidal clerics
who arm youths with kerosene and
match, cudgel and knife, a few Naira
in their beggars’ bowls, and dispatch
them to set fire to structures of
comradely cohabitation, of reflection,
of mind enlargement, and destroy
communities of learning. “Your gospel
of separatism goes beyond the
geographical – in which I have not the
slightest interest! – but the
humanistic.
The difference is in the weapon – in
your case, poison, mind corrosion.
“The means – Internet, and it’s wide
open, undiscriminating generosity.
That is where you lay spores of
poison, and doom future generations
to a confinement of human
relationships within the darkest
corners of the mind. “You are beyond
pity. Kindly absent your selves from
my funeral, when that event finally
intrudes,” Soyinka said.